


Not So Scared

by PsychicBananaSplit



Series: So, Your Best Friend is a Demon -- Official Instructional Handbook on How to Live with a Demonic Loved One [1]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Shane Madej, Cuddling & Snuggling, Demon Shane Madej, Demons, Fluff and Angst, Human Ryan Bergara, Identity Reveal, In the Shower, Light Angst, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Reveal, Ryan Bergara Loves Shane Madej, Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej-Centric, Scared Ryan Bergara, Scared Shane Madej, Shane Madej Loves Ryan Bergara, Showers, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 14:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19793221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychicBananaSplit/pseuds/PsychicBananaSplit
Summary: When Shane confessed that he was a demon-- well, not really confessed rather than demonstrated --Ryan can’t say that he was surprised. Not so much as terrified out of his mind.Ryan froze under the gaze of wide pits for eyes, black as the starless night sky, black as an endless hole. He genuinely thought, for a moment, that he would start falling. The demon’s wings flapped, leathery and batlike, and the demon’s tail was streaking back and forth madly, a jet black whip the size of its spine. Ryan stared at it, it stared at Ryan, and Ryan wondered if he should stop calling it an ‘it’ because just twenty minutes ago it was Shane, his more-than-friend friend, the guy that was convincing him that ghosts and demons weren’t real, the man that he had kissed just yesterday, and now he’s calling him an it and he’s being stared at with cold, dead, soulless eyes of the thing that’s Shane/Not-Shane and God, please God, oh, God, he’s gonna die--“Ryan?”“What-what-what the, what the f-fuck, what the fuck are you?”





	Not So Scared

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i do not ship shane and ryan in real life, but in this very much fictional story, in which shane is a demon, they are together.  
> ok, i've been in the writing mood the last couple of days. sushi. i mean, sue me.  
> i'm also going to take a little break from umbrella academy fics. i feel like if i only write about them, then my works will become the same recycled material until the second season comes out. so, here's this.  
> eventually, dragon valley (my most recent story before this one) and another project i have in mind, starring these two hooligans, will conjoin. it'll take a while, though.   
> a long, long while.

The dark canopy of trees flashed by the dull blue of the early stages of nighttime, the sunshine fading, and Ryan was panicking because of strange noises coming from their car.

“Shane,  _ fuck,  _ I’m telling you,  _ pull over.”  _ Ryan jumped from a bump in the road, causing a rattle beneath him, and he’s so adorable when he’s scared that Shane can’t help but grin a non-teasing grin for a change. He chuckles and keeps his eyes in front of him. Ryan wrings his hands together. “Shane!”

“Ryan, man, we can make it to the nearest hotel, and  _ then  _ we’ll call a mechanic. Chill out.” The frightened man glared at the other, but said nothing. A lump formed in Ryan’s throat and a wet heat brimmed up in his eyes, but he looked away. Shane felt the rising waters of shame in his stomach, curling sickeningly around his guts, and he sighed.

“I just,” he let out another breath through his nose, “I just don’t want you to be stuck in the dark. Especially when we’re both jumpy as all Hell.” He glanced worriedly at Ryan. 

Ryan took a long breath and blinked the tears away as the lump in his throat grew, but he nodded in earnest, taking a look at Shane and giving him an honest stare. “Alright. Alright, yeah. I agree.”

They drove in silence, besides the occasional thump and Ryan’s muffled gasps. The headlights gleamed in stark contrast to the still darkening sky. Soon enough, they couldn’t distinguish forest from airspace, and all that was left was their little pocket of light from the car. Ryan had curled up into a safe ball of tightly-packed legs and arms, resting his head against the window but closing his eyes. Taking deep breaths and focusing on his still-beating heart when Shane took his own hand away from the wheel and grabbed his hand. At first, the man in the passenger seat panicked, his head swirling with the possibilities and the outcomes of veering off of the road and crashing into the undergrowth and-

“It’s okay. Okay?” Ryan let out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding in, and gripped Shane’s hand tighter, squeezing comfort and a reply of  _ yes. Yes, everything’s okay. Yes. _

Shane waved his wrist, shaking their hands up and down twice before nodding and slipping his fingers back to the steering wheel. Ryan held his wrist close to his chest, relaxed his neck, and shut his eyes to listen to the steady thrum of the car, still moving forward. 

Shane could feel his eyes going awry.  _ No, not now. Not now.  _ The shadows in the distance seemed to grow, expand, grabbing grimy fingers reaching for them, for  _ him,  _ for  _ Ryan,  _ and Shane met his own gaze in the rear view mirror to be met back with black caves.

_ Not now. _

And that’s when the car just--shut off. Everything stopped. The movement, the lights.  _ All the lights turned off.  _ The tires rolled to a finish but Ryan had startled awake by that point and there was an eerie sense of calm that settled down. Quiet, space-like. Floating, suspended in nothing. Shane forced his eyes back into their disguise, flicked the key around, and looked at Ryan.

“Stay here. I’ll go check on this.” Ryan nodded with flying saucers for eyes, almost catatonic, frozen in fear and the dread unfolding in his chest, a heavy feeling of the deepest of deep chills. Shane slammed the door shut, muffled footsteps walked around to the front of the car and opened the hood. Ryan wrung his hands once, twice, thrice before blinking and breathing. He gathered up a bag of supplies and clicked a flashlight on, shining it around the car. He shivered; had it gotten colder? Everything was fine.  _ Everything’s okay. _

Their equipment was still intact, surprisingly. The cameras, the tripods, nothing was broken.  _ Well, why would they be broken, Ryan?  _ He imagined Shane snarking at him.  _ Don’t tell me you thought a g-g-g-g-ghost was haunting our car, Ryan! _

_ No, no, I wasn’t thinking that, I just, I just- _

_ Oh, come now, Ryan Bergara. You thought  _

_ there were ghosts in our car, didn’t ya? Thought they _

_ were hauntin’ up a storm?  _

_...The thought may have crossed my mind.  _

_ Hahahahahahaha _

_ No, no! Stop laughing at me, haha, stop it! _

_ Hahahahaha _

_ (wheeze) Alright, I- _

Ryan snapped out of staring into space with a slight noise. Once again, out of paranoia, he swung the flashlight around the car, checking one more time.  _ Why isn’t Shane done yet?  _ Ryan gave the lifted hood a look, wondering that if he should get out of the car, what would happen to him. Would he be flung to the trees, to the forest floor? Or at the car, leaving a Ryan-sized dent in the sleek metal? Or, instead of thrown, he would be dragged down the asphalt, grating his skin off on the rough ground and leaving him, face-scraped and dead and  _ he’s gonna die- _

He blinked.  _ No. No, I’m not gonna die. I’m not gonna be thrown or dragged or any of that bullshit. Nothing’s gonna happen if I just walk outside. _

Ryan zipped his jacket, patted his waist for his stupid holy water gun  _ (hahahahaha, you-ou look like an i-di-ot, hahahahaha),  _ and gripped the flashlight with a white-knuckled hand. He was shaking; he couldn’t feel it, but he could see the circle of light vibrating with his terrified movements. He took a deep breath, maybe two. Ryan closed his fingers around the handle.

_ Like a Band-Aid, just rip it off. Open the door. Open the door, open the door, open the- _

The door opened with a click, and it was suddenly heavier than it was before. The cold air of the night blew in and chilled him even more, even deeper into his core, and he instantly got a great whiff of the most putrid scent he had ever smelled. His nose wrinkled, and he almost gagged, nearly puking. He was appalled. It was almost as if an animal had died, and someone--or something--left it to rot in the middle of the road. A fly flew upwards and smacked him in the eye, and Ryan gasped, blinking furiously at the itching poke. 

That’s when he heard the growl.

Loud and echoing, it was all-encompassing, petrifying him in the car with fear. It was all over, it wouldn’t stop. Ryan fought the urge to cover his ears. That’s when the scream did it. An ear-piercing shriek convinced Ryan’s hands from their frozen positions to dropping the flashlight and clutching at his ears, smashing his only light with a dull crack and thud. He shut his eyes, but it was just as dark as keeping them open. He couldn’t breath, the dark was too much, the screech was still muffled from his ears and the smell, oh,  _ god,  _ the  _ smell,  _ it smelled like a dead body.  _ It smelled like a dead body.  _ How did Ryan know what a dead body smelled like? 

Ryan rolled out of the car against his own judgement, his muscles going weaker by the second, not holding him up any longer. He huddled into a ball; his hands squeezing the life out of his ears, hitting his head on the road to stop the screaming,  _ stop screaming,  _ so hard that his right ear started ringing. It took a long while to realize that the outside screaming had stopped, and it was actually him yelling. 

And, just like nothing had happened, he was back to the terrifying silence he was stuck in before. Cemented limbs unglued themselves from the shaking torso and pushed himself up onto his caving legs, trying more than once. He was kneeling, he was standing, he was falling and lying on the ground, shifting to that his cheeks were pressed on the street. And he got back up. His hands felt weirdly sticky, strangely slimy and wet.

On the third time trying to get up, he succeeded. Taking breaths, breathing. He’s breathing.  _ I’m breathing, my heart’s beating. I’m alive. _

The lights turned on. Ryan flinched heavily away from the car, his head pounding, and groaned in pain. His mouth was dry and his eyes were watery and squinting, everything blurred before him. His ears were ringing and, honestly, he felt like he had a hangover. 

“Ugh, Shane? You get the car fixed?” Ryan rubbed his tired eyes and leaned on the door. When Shane didn’t reply, he sighed. “Are you trying to scare me? ‘Cause it isn’t working. You better come out-”

He opened his eyes.

And that wasn’t his first mistake. 

The first thing that he saw after cracking open his eyelids was black. Not black as in the dark, but black as in sticky, wet black covering the road in front of him, around him, splattering on the grass and the trees around them. Mostly on the road. Ryan dare not look down at his, no doubt, black covered arms and hands.  _ Black covered face. _

The second thing, was Shane.

Or, rather, some _ thing.  _

A near ten-foot tall something, with a humped back and horrid, leather-tight skin stretching over jutting, pointed bones. The hands, the fingers, were curled into unending claws. Ten two-feet needles dripping with the black stuff. 

And the  _ wings.  _ Great big,  _ great big.  _ Curving up and out over the scene. He couldn’t even see the whole wing. It’s eyes, basically two holes nearly the size of half of the head opened painfully wide. Wider and wider and wider, and the mouth was filled to the brim with jagged fangs, saliva dribbling down it’s chin. It’s tongue flicked out to lick it clean, red and parted in two, like a snake’s. 

It’s dark, shriveled, skinny form shrunk, devolving, shorter and wider and more human but still an  _ it.  _ The skin faded back to pale white, the hair growing back on it’s bald, sharp head. The hands shortened from claws to fingers, but some features remained.

It looked like Shane.

Ryan froze under the gaze of wide pits for eyes, black as the starless night sky, black as an endless hole. He genuinely thought, for a moment, that he would start falling. The demon’s wings flapped, leathery and bat-like, and the demon’s tail was streaking back and forth madly, a jet black whip the size of its spine. Ryan stared at it, it stared at Ryan, and Ryan wondered if he should stop calling it an ‘it’ because just twenty minutes ago it was Shane, his more-than-friend friend, the guy that was convincing him that ghosts and demons weren’t real, the man that he had  _ kissed  _ just  _ yesterday,  _ and now he’s calling him an  _ it  _ and he’s being stared at with cold, dead, soulless eyes of the  _ thing  _ that’s Shane/Not-Shane and God,  _ please God, oh, God, he’s gonna die _ \--

“Ryan?” It growled, but it almost sounded like Shane. It was almost his voice, it was almost his sincere, heartfelt comfort, but it  _ wasn’t. _

“What-what-what the, what the f-fuck, what the fuck are you?”

For a second, it looked hurt.  _ Shane  _ looked hurt. God, fuck, fucking Christ, Ryan doesn’t know anymore. He doesn’t know, and he feels like he’s going to cry, or yell, or run the  _ fuck  _ away and call for help, or spray him with his  _ stupid holy water gun,  _ like it would  _ help. _ Ryan feels like he’s gonna shit his pants, or vomit, or both. And the  _ thing  _ is  _ staring  _ at him with cold, dead eyes,  _ are they even eyes? _

“I think you know,” Shane replied. He bit his lip in ignominy, and averted his gaze. His voice was still distorted somewhat, chopped-up and croaky. “You weren’t supposed to see me like this.”

And it’s the matter-of-factly way that he says it that makes Ryan breathe. As if he didn’t already know that he wasn’t supposed to see his friend as a  _ fucking demon.  _ The sarcastic mother _ fucker.  _ Except he didn’t say it sarcastically. It wasn’t a joke.

“W-w-where, what, what did you do with Shane?” It-the demon- _ Shane, maybe,  _ looks shy to answer the question. He sighed.

“I am Shane, Ryan. I didn’t possess him; I’m not lying. I’m not a liar.”

_ “Bullshit.” _ Ryan snarled, gathering back the remains of his brain and lashing out. Shane looked like a deer in headlights, only the deer was on its hind feet, had a pair of wings, and no eyes. His tail waved erratically.  _ “Bullshit!  _ You’re a  _ liar.  _ You  _ told  _ me that none of  _ this  _ existed! Fuck, was all of it  _ real?  _ Could I have died from  _ this?  _ From anything  _ else?”  _ When Shane didn’t reply, Ryan grew more enraged.  _ “Answer me, coward!” _

“I wanted to protect you, okay?!” It was strange to see a six-foot tall man curl in on himself. His shoulders curved, forcing his chest to cave. His eyebrows knitted closer together, he whimpered in distress. “I wanted, I,  _ fuck,  _ I wanted to hide all of it from you because you wouldn’t  _ understand.  _ I  _ knew  _ you would react like this! You-you-you, I-” His chest heaved with the effort of keeping his sobs caged inside, but he was dangerously close to setting free the frustrated tears in his eyes. Frustrated that he can’t explain. Frustrated that Ryan can’t possibly understand. “You can’t  _ possibly  _ begin to  _ comprehend  _ everything that happens in my world, Ryan! And I don’t want you to get hurt, okay? I just,” he stopped. His voice had quieted from its loud, grumbling roar to a whisper, and Ryan regretted everything that happened tonight. He regrets even coming here. He wants nothing more than to just sit on his couch with Shane nuzzled up into his chest watching a horror movie and making commentary on how stupid and not-scary it is and  _ god,  _ he just wants to  _ rest.  _ Shane looks so defeated, and Ryan shoved him into this corner, and he’s  _ sorry  _ but he just can’t get the words out of his shut-tight throat. 

Deeply inside his thoughts, he didn’t see the wings shrinking back into Shane’s back, nor the tail, nor the eyes closing back to the gratefully normal brown. His blood rushed back throughout his skin, making him less pale and more human.  _ More human, ha.  _

“I don’t, I-I, I d-don’t, I  _ can’t-”  _ Shane took a step closer, the lights pressing against him and illuminating his  _ very much human  _ face, and Ryan is so conflicted to call the cops, or to pray, or to fall into Shane’s twig-skinny arms. He felt sick, and he wanted to rub his eyes but couldn’t because of that  _ black shit  _ all over his arms. “I d-don’t underst-stand. You’re right. You’re  _ right.  _ I-I, I need, I need-  _ fuck,  _ I need to  _ go home.  _ I want to go home, Shane,  _ please,  _ I can’t do this here.” And that’s the truth. Ryan can’t  _ possibly  _ begin to think about any of this right here. In the middle of the street.  _ Covered in that black shit, god, get it off.  _ “Get it off,  _ get it off, please, Shane, I-  _ I need you, I need  _ you,  _ not, not, not,  _ not that.  _ I’m  _ sorry.”  _

Shane looked sympathetic as he walked around to his door, nodding and piling himself in the car. He waited a minute for Ryan to sit in as well, practically going into shock from everything.  _ Everything.  _ Everything’s okay.  _ Everything’s okay. _

God, how many times has he said that to himself?

He’s just so,  _ so, so tired.  _

_ Too tired. _

Shane rolled up to the hotel a few minutes later, dull white light shining into his sore eyes. He closed them.

_ Why did he have to do that? Why, why couldn’t he just pretend to fix the fucking car, scare the Others away, and drive off? Why did he have to ruin everything?  _

He ruined everything with Ryan. Their relationship, their future. Everything.

Shane didn’t have time to dwell in his thoughts, however, as Ryan roused himself from sleep and shuffled in his seat, sitting up but sliding a small but noticeable distance away from the driver. Shane swallowed self-hate and twisted the key out of the ignition. 

“I didn’t think you would want to spend the rest of the night on the road, so we’re staying a night at the hotel.” Ryan nodded. Silent and as locked up as a safe. They gathered their necessities, and Shane wanted to crack a joke, sprinkle some sarcasm, but he couldn’t bring himself to lighten the mood when it’s drowned out all the possible light available. 

They filed out like robots, and Shane took a careful glance at Ryan, and  _ holy shit,  _ he was  _ covered  _ in the  _ blood.  _

Heaven knows how hard it is to wash demon blood out of clothes. 

Checking into the hotel was awkward, or maybe just fuzzy from sleep deprivation. 

“We had to repair our car on the way here, and my friend here, he slipped in the mud!” Ryan tried to glare at Shane, but his smiley laugh and friendly wrinkles around his eyes almost made him smile as well.

Well, you know, if not for the disturbing display he had seen ten minutes earlier. 

Being a cheap-ass hotel, it was almost completely deserted save for a few guests and the staff, so they got a room closest to the entrance. Thanking the Lord (ironically, Ryan now realises), he waved the key over the sensor and it unlocked with a click, allowing Ryan to rush inside, drop all his things and lock himself in the bathroom. In less than fifteen seconds, he had turned on the bustling water and shed his clothes, dipping himself under the shower spray.

And he just stood there, not watching the black leaking down, off of his hands and descending the drain. He let the water flatten his hair to his head, slicking it up and dripping in his face. 

He felt alone. Hell, he wasn’t even alone but he was lonely and it confused the fuck out of him. 

He wanted Shane. He wanted Shane, so,  _ so  _ much that his chest  _ hurts.  _

He was being stupid. Shane’s not gonna hurt him, because  _ Shane hasn’t hurt him yet.  _ He never will. He wants-he wants-

He wants. Primal urge sewn into the fragments of humanity, he  _ wants.  _ He  _ wants  _ Shane, he  _ needs  _ him. He needs Shane in the same way that he needs food, the way he needs water. He needs Shane in voice and touch and taste and he wants to kiss him on the very lips that turned into wickedly sharp teeth and a snarling mouth, he wants the hands that were claws and he wants the warm brown eyes whose counterparts will haunt him for as many of his days as possible.

He’s mulled over his thoughts, and now, Ryan isn’t as scared as he once was.

He swallowed, and shuffled his feet. He wrings his hands. His arms feel barren and cold without Shane’s hands. “Shane?” His heart was in his throat. Ryan only had to wait a few seconds before a muffled voice carried its way through the door, past the blood rushing in his ears.

“Yeah?” Ryan tried so hard not to tear his own throat out from the reclusive tone in that word. It sounded little, small. 

Ryan hates that he made Shane feel small.

“Can you, can you come in here? With me? I don’t,” he paused. “I don’t want to be alone.”

He knows that he sound pathetic and scared.  _ He knows.  _ In reality, Shane would probably say no, go fuck off, and walk away. He would fault him on how misunderstanding he is and just leave.

“...Yeah. Yeah, I will, Ryan.”

And this is probably not reality.

The door opened and closed, and his heart eventually fell out of his trachea. He wasn’t choking anymore. “Um, do you want me to-to, join you? In there?”

“Yes.” After a moment of hesitation, he quietly added, “please.”

He didn’t care if he sounded desperate. 

Through the shower curtain the shuffling of clothes was audible, flannel over shirt, belt buckle undone, and Shane had the courtesy to get in behind Ryan, slid the curtain back into place, and stood there like a beanstalk for a solid two minutes. He ghosted a hand over his shoulder, but turned it away, and Ryan had enough.

He spun around and shoved his head into Shane’s neck, hugging limbs around his torso and nuzzling his nose into his collarbone. Shane froze, unwilling to move, then wrapping his octopus arms around him. It was a purely nonsexual encounter, and neither could love it more.

Ryan’s hands trailed themselves up and down, tracing the knobs of vertebrae, curving, twisting mazes around the ribs, closing into fists near the bottom. “I don’t hate you.” 

Shane was gentle, massaging the tension out of Ryan’s muscles and rubbing poems into his skin. The steam and splashing water dampened his hair, falling into his eyes. “I don’t hate you either.”

The shorter man pulled away, meeting the other’s irises with his own. “I understand. Why you did it. I understand.”

They stared, and for one electrifying moment, they were the only ones. They were the only people on the face of the planet. Just the demon and the ghosthunter and a shower spray of clouds. 

Ryan wants to kiss him.

Luckily, Shane has always had that gift of knowing what people want; and beats him to it.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.

They get out of the shower with more than a few pruned fingers. Shane had washed Ryan’s hair, Ryan had bathed Shane in kisses until he was giggling. They both had gotten dressed in loose flannels (of course, from Shane’s suitcase), and are now lying on one bed even though Shane paid for two. 

Ryan learns that Shane’s hair is very soft, and that he craves the feeling of his gargantuan head on his own chest.

“Why?” Ryan halted, his fingers halfway in the nest of tangled, still drying locks, with his eyebrows all the way to his hairline.

“Why, what?” Shane gulped.

“Why...why are you so...fine? With this? I just-” he sat up, criss-crossing on the bed, and Ryan propped himself up on his elbows. “I just--don’t understand. You were shitting your pants earlier and now, you’re just, fine?” Shane shook his head. “I want this, between you and I, this  _ relationship,  _ but I don’t know how you can just, like,  _ get it  _ so easily.”

Ryan nodded. His voice was soft, low, “I’m not going to lie to you. I, truthfully, really don’t understand. My mind is still, I don’t know, boggled, I guess.” Shane shrunk in on himself further, but Ryan pressed on. “But, the one thing I  _ do  _ know, is that,” he held Shane’s hands, “Is that you won’t hurt me. If that was your goal, then you would’ve done it already.”

_ He’s not so scared anymore. _

Shane bobbed his head, the brokenly puzzled look in his eyes washed away, and he laid his head back down onto Ryan’s chest, humming his gratitude and comfort.

Everything isn’t okay. Everything is  _ more  _ than okay.


End file.
